Catching Up

As many of you probably know by now, we made it to our new home and are mostly settled.  Because we have been so busy setting up our new home, the blog has had to wait (although there has been plenty of ideas in my head that I could go into great detail about!).  But to keep this blog to a readable size, I'll try to keep my thoughts brief.  

Initial thoughts on the island: it is absolutely beautiful here!  It is unlike anything I have ever experienced and every day I am thankful to have this opportunity to travel.  So I will never use this blog to complain although I can see things that might bring some people down.  I'll get to those in a moment.  Everyone here is so nice! From the Marshallese people who come here to work to the American's that live here.  You cannot go anywhere without people waving or stopping to talk to you (whether it is someone you know or someone who knows you are new to the island).  

Some things I could see people could complain about (but I won't!): Rain! It rains at least once a day it seems and we are currently in transition of seasons...meaning we are not even into the rainy season.  But the rain here isn't what one would expect. It is really warm along with the air temperature being warm so even though it will rain buckets, getting wet isn't really a hardship unless being wet drives you nuts.  Bugs: roaches, ants, and geckos have all been in our house since we arrived although I am told they really prefer to not be in your house.  Roaches are bigger than what we had in Georgia which was surprising to me.  From my experience with big bugs in Georgia however I will not hesitate to squish a roach.  So it seems that their numbers in my house have decreased dramatically since we arrived.  Even the ants seemed to have tapered off as we have set up our house.  The geckos are really small (mostly around an inch long) and are a good 'bug' to have in your house.  They are cute and they eat other bugs! 

Food and Mail: I have been pleasantly surprised by the food selection here.  There is a decent supply of organic products and produce but there is also a huge supply of processed foods.  That is the case in most US grocery stores though too.  Items come and go here, for example: right now there is no yogurt on island because the shipment that came was not at the right temperature; I am assuming it was trashed because of safety reasons.  Mail is also sporadic.  I have only ordered things through Amazon at this point so it seems some things have come pretty quickly (within 6 or 7 days) and some of my other things took about 6 weeks to be delivered.  I'm not sure where mail/packages go or if they sit somewhere for a long time but there is no such thing as instant gratification here (which isn't a bad thing!).  Patience is key with all things here.  Enjoy some photos now!

This was in the plane as we were getting close to Kwaj so I am assuming this is part of the Kwajalein Atoll (atoll just means a group of islands that form a chain)

Our items from the states was delivered on the 3rd day were were here on island: which is apparently unusually fast! Another thing to be thankful for!

When I saw this massive pile of boxes...I just thought why did we bring so much stuff?! We were fast though and had almost all of the boxes unpacked the same day that our boxes arrived! 

Now we are getting to the point where we can enjoy everything the island has to offer us.  One of those things is snorkeling! I have yet to go out but Aaron and Carson have already been out twice and are starting to grow fond of the fun activity.  

One of our goals here was to limit electronic time.  Since we just got our tv set up yesterday that hasn't been a hard thing to do but I don't think it will be a hard goal when this is your backyard.  Every night we go to the lagoon side of the island to swim and watch the sunset.  

This was the best sunset yet!